God bless this movie and the wonderful people who created it

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” is a film perpetually in motion. It dares you to try to catch on to all of its many expositions, flights of fancy, and outright lunancies and it will consistently feel like it’s beating you every time. However, rarely has such a beating felt so powerful and so attuned to the joys of watching cinema.

I’ll take my victory lap now. I predicted, when I called it the best movie of 2016, that “Swiss Army Man”, and particularly its creators The Daniels, would be cinematic real deals. After watching this one, I can’t imagine there could be anyone in Hollywood who won’t want to work with them. There is no creator out there right now like them, which is exactly what movies need at the moment.

Michelle Yeoh, of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Crazy Rich Asians”, all but proves she’s Oscar bound here as Evelyn, a woman trying to manage a struggling laundromat while caring for sick father and a sweet natured but spacey husband (Ke Huy Quan). She takes her frustrations out on her lesbian daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu), whose lifestyle she has never fully embraced.

Here’s where things get tricky. As Evelyn and her family head into the elevator for a meeting with the tax auditor (Jamie Lee Curtis), her husband suddenly has a schizoid moment, turning into another man who explains he’s from another universe and that she is the only one who has the power to save millions of other universes from a black hole of chaos.

What? The idea here is that there are various Evelyns throughout the multiverse and this Evelyn needs to harness their powers in order to beat the forces of evil. To do that there are all sorts of jump pad codes; things that must be done in order to direct one’s self to the right universe. There’s also rules for reverse jumping and not letting each one of the various you’s leak in to drive you crazy.

It’s incredibly hard to follow all of this and this movie moves from exposition to kung fu, kung fu to scene of hardship, scene of hardship to something hilariously quirky, and something hilariously quirky to scene of emotional poignancy so often that the ride kinda becomes the main point of the whole thing- it carries us on a wave of discovery in what feels like every moment.

The thing is that there are so many highlights. From hilarious worlds like one where people have hot dogs for fingers, to one where Evelyn is very close to the movie star version Yeoh is, to one where people are actually rocks discussing the meaning of life, to a fight sequence where the jumping pads involve anal penetration.

This is not a film you would expect to bring you to tears but the biggest surprise the Daniels save is for the ending. They grab for the most human of conflicts, one that has plagued us for so long- the gravity of life itself, the consistently growing and changing conflicts that have set us more and more on edge over the past several years especially, and made us feel insignificant and weak. An incredible battle for the souls of humanity is waged- cynicism and empathy collide and husband and wife, mother and daughter try to find some semblance of meaning. That such a scene can grow out of any movie, and nonetheless not just be loaded with feeling but also be so organic is a revelation and a testament to the power of film i’ve not seen in so long.

Yeoh is equally wonderful- still a superb physical performer but this time she gets to go so much deeper- playing a character with hurts, shame, and her own regrets. Quan is an equally great story as he was the same actor who played Shortround in “Indiana Jones”. He finally gets his big break and creates something charismatically lovely and insightful, and Hsu is another star turn here- matching Yeoh step for step in a role as the daughter and in another I won’t give away.

Curtis is also having great fun here as a tax lady stereotype- that she throws down with Yeoh is just another reason to look on in awe at this totally bonkers film. “Everything Everywhere” is a movie that makes the heart leap and sends the mind spinning with possibilities. You feel spent and exhausted by the end of it but you also know for sure you’re gonna want to see it again just for the thrill of discovering more of its pleasures.